In a rare show of solidarity guided by strong common interests, India and China joined forces to ward off a major diplomatic offensive by the US and European countries to commit developing economies to targets for cutting emissions in the declaration of 17 major economies to be released tomorrow.

The only aspect agreed upon was that global temperature should not rise by more than 2 degrees Celsius.

With President Barack Obama slated to personally chair the Major Economies Forum on Thursday, the US had a lot at stake at Tuesday’s ministerial meeting, where the text of the declaration was to be finalised. Differences among the participants, however, pushed matters to a point where an agreed document seemed unlikely. But India emerged as a key facilitator in getting the developing countries to agree to a declaration while convincing the West to drop the insistence on targets and save everyone the embarrassment of an official failure of talks.

The US, which under Obama is keen to demonstrate leadership on climate change, tried to split the developing world with the aim of getting some sort of target commitment into the declaration. It is learnt that G-5 chair Mexico was amenable to toeing the US line on identifying some long-term target, such as a 50 per cent reduction in emissions, by 2050. However, the other countries in the G-5 — India, China, South Africa and Brazil — closed ranks against the US attempt.

While US is not part of the Kyoto commitments, countries like Japan are willing to set targets based on 2005 levels of emission. But India and China stressed that the Kyoto protocol had fixed 1990 as the base year, and reminded developed economies that they needed to live up to their commitments before expecting developing economies to deliver.

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